Do you book your Holidays through a Travel agent, Online or over the Phone??

I wanted to get a bit of an insight as to why customers use a certain method to book their holidays. For years I had always used a travel agent to book my holidays. What I soon became to realise is that booking online or over the phone could be quicker cheaper and overall a far more enjoyable experience. However this isn’t always the case!!

I have now worked in travel over 12 years. I have worked for 3 different travel agents and over the past 3 years I have been working from home. Since working from home I cant quite understand why anyone would book their holiday through a travel agent in a shop.

My first job in travel was in Thomas Cook. One of the most famous travel agents in the UK. When I first started working there customers used to come in to the shop with a brochure on the correct page and point to the hotel and say i want to go there. I would happily book the holiday no questions asked. However this was slightly before the internet was about to explode. There is so much information on the internet these days both good and bad I find customers are doing more research than ever before. To get a job in travel you very rarely have to have any formal qualifications so technically the customers could be more experienced than the travel consultant. So I ask the question again why would you go in to a shop to book?

My second Job in travel was a bit more advanced. I worked for a luxury travel company called Kuoni. The reason you may want to go into a travel agents shop is that the holidays they sell are a bit more tailormade. Not just going to one destination and flying home. You could do multi stop destinations where flights, hotels and transfers need to match up. As the holidays were more expensive and normally for special occasions. Can you imagine your once in a lifetime holiday booking your self and going wrong and you have no one to turn to for help

I am now at cruise.co.uk working from home. Here we do a mixture of online and over the phone bookings. This is another job where I would say would be best to talk to a professional. To get a job at cruise they only hire people with tonnes of travel experienced. You must have been on the ships and been to different destinations around the world. Giving the consultants the edge. With new ships coming out every year we are constantly trained to be up to date with the new ships before they go on sale. We do a mixture of standard cruises as well as Tailormade and bucketlist itineraries worth thousands of pounds. By calling up you not only get the best knowledge in the field you also get the same protection if anything to go wrong and you will also get the best prices. A win win win I would say.

As a general rule I would say if you are looking for a bog standard bucket and spade holiday you could probably do this yourself. Anything else why dont you let the experts help you out and take away the stress of booking your once in a lifetime holiday